The MUNY Opens Its 95th Season

As The MUNY opens its 95th season of outdoor musical theatre in Forest Park, Executive Producer Mike Isaacson is excited about the number of “firsts.” Four of the productions are MUNY premieres including Monty Python’s Spamalot which opens the season, Shrek The Musical, Nunsense Muny Style! and Mary Poppins. In the production of Mary Poppins, for the first time in MUNY history, a character will fly over the audience. Finally, The MUNY has a new, state-of-the-art fan system that is so quiet that the fans can run during the entire performance.

2013 is the second season for Isaacson in the position of The MUNY’s Executive Producer. He is especially proud of that fact that even though last Summer was the hottest in recorded history, the audience for The MUNY was just as high as the previous year. He points out that The MUNY is not only the oldest and largest outdoor musical theatre in the county, but the most democratic. 1,200 of the 10,000 seats are free and it attracts people of all ages and stations in life. He notes a favorite image from last season’s closing production of The King and I. “I look over one night and there’s this couple in their early 70's and they are holding hands and staring at the stage and you could just see the bliss on their face. And next to them is a couple in their 20's with the tattoos and the piercings staring at the stage with the same bliss and you go, ‘wow.’ And that is just the glory of The MUNY.”

Isaacson also notes as St. Louis prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary that The MUNY is really an outgrowth of the 150th anniversary celebration. “The very idea of that was to bring everyone together, experience something and it will be a better city. And that remains in sort of the soil of The MUNY. It is a community civic idea and I just find it amazing that we’ve kept that for 95 years and celebrated it. No other city has this.”

Isaacson was Steve Potter’s guest on Cityscape to discuss the 95th season, The MUNY’s history and its place in the civic life of the city. Potter also congratulated him for his Tony Award nomination for his production of Bring It On in the “Best Musical” category.